
Class _H HH 

Bode . A3<r 

CopightN 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Xittle Jevemiabs 

ffi\> IRalpb HIberteon 

"Ipbilosopbicue" 
in tbe Bmerican Gooperator 




Zhe Cooperative lPresV 
Xewiston /Ifte v ' 
1903 



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- 
CONGF 

Two Copies Recei/ed 

JUN 17 1903 

fcLASS ft. XXc, No. 
COPY B. 



Copyright 1903 

The Cooperative Association of America 

Lewis ton, Maine 



dforeworb 



HIS is a good world. I am moved to a pro- 

T found and enthusiastic admiration for the 
many signs of goodness which I discover 
both in the physical world and in the lives 
of men everywhere. Faith and hope and 
love are in the native air; ultimate and 
__^^^ present good is in the nature of things; 
***&?" beauty marks the universal handiwork; 
flr^S? love is the throbbing passion of the 
nfk J/U spheres, and nobility is the adorning 
^SgSy crown of human nature. Even those 
wrongs that must be righted we contem- 
plate with a courageous heart, and with a view that 
attempts to include some of the past and something 
of possible futurity, as well as the present. For 
wrongs are generally very old. Their forms change 
as changes are made by development and ci-vilization, 
but the essential wrongs are older than civilization. 
We should be wiser than the alarmists who see in 
present wrongs the form of a new-born chaos that 
shall bring dire disaster. Wrong has always been in 
retreat — sometimes disorderly retreat. What we see 
to-day needing to be set right is not a new thing, nor 
is it as strong as its opposing right. It is not here to 
remain. It need, not discourage. It need not drown 
the music of prevailing goodness, nor destroy the 
beauty of the great picture of common right living. 
We are able to put it away. This is our business in 
life. The wrongs that mark the bounds of progress 



FOREWORD 



must be removed that progress may go on. To this 
end, we must first see them clearly, and in the effort 
to do this we must remember that no general term 
denotes unmitigated wrong— that right and wrong 
are most mysteriously mixed up in the character of 
people and in the conditions of their lives. No cata- 
logue of vice is strictly possible. Some of the "sins " 
are virtues when seen on the reverse side, and most 
of the virtues have a stale odor about them when 
you turn them wrong side out. Discriminate, my 
friend, discriminate. Cultivate in yourself that spirit 
of fairness, and that broad view of facts which, 
while they do not palliate nor condone evil, fulfill 
the Golden Rule of thought, and are conducive to 
majestic sweetness and intrinsic strength. 



T0Umeces8ar\> poverty 



1 SHALL not write about bow all poverty 

I is wrong, nor bow all poverty can be 

removed, nor wbat is tbe cause of all 
poverty. There are a great many causes 
and many forces are working the cure. 
Our lives are bound together by infinitely 

variant and inextricable mazes of rela- 

If v^£ tionships. Social causes and effects, there- 
Jjy^ft fove. are wonderfully complex as well as 
fjftvTNft mysteriously subtle. 
PT^yfc There is an appalling amount of poverty 
in the world, and much of this poverty is 
unnecessary. » 

Unnecessary poverty is produced by many causes. 
is found in many forms, and is removable in different 
ways. We may fairly call unnecessary all that pov- 
erty which can be removed by such social reforms as 
involve no injustice to any one, and imply no for- 
feiture of any man's right to be poor if he chooses so 
to be. There is a certain measure of freedom, as 
well as a certain measure of justice, which we have 
a right to insist upon with relation to all men. 
When we have done our best at amelioration, there 
will still remain a degree of opportunity to oppress 
and a degree of liberty to squander and to loaf. It 
becomes us, therefore, in our protest against wrong, 
to make exact discriminations, and to take the meas- 
ure of what is possible. 

It is unnecessary that the rich and powerful 



UNNECESSARY POVERTY 

should have the opportunities which they now have 
for oppressing the poor and the weak. These oppor- 
tunities do not exist in the nature of things, but in 
man-made laws. There would be no such thing as 
security in private property except for human laws. 
Human laws protect us in our interchange of rent, 
interest, and wages. Human law must be respected, 
obeyed, and conserved or else changed. It is fallible, 
changeable, unstable, and always can be improved 
upon. It is unnecessary that the rich should be so 
sorely overburdened with money as they are, and it 
therefore is unnecessary that the poor should pay 
them such high rents as are now paid. The law can 
adjust this matter. Oppressive rents are not estab- 
lished in the nature of things. Not a dollar of rent 
could be collected in the whole land except for the 
law. which all rightfully support: so it follows that 
only just so much rent can be collected as the law 
will allow. The law now allows an indefinite amount 
of rent to be collected, but only a limited amount of 
interest. The law should protect the poor in this 
matter of rent also ; but perhaps the best way to do 
this would be by forcing all the land into use as our 
Single-tax friends advocate. Different methods are 
proposed which we need not here discuss, but we 
should see clearly that the principle of governmental 
protection to the weak from exorbitant rents is a 
valid one, and we should try to secure it. 

There is also a great deal of poverty caused by the 
exorbitant interest that is charged poor people for 
the use of money. Almost every government ha& 
established bounds for the limitation of this form of 
oppression, but those bounds are so large that they 
amount practically to no protection at all. Six per 
cent, interest has eaten up thousands upon thousands 
of homes and farms, and left the people homeless* 



U X X E C E S S A E Y P V E B T Y 

This is unnecessary, because, while the farmers are 
paying six and eight per cent, on their mortgages, 
the banks are getting all the money they want to 
use. and are paying nothing for the use of it. They 
get this money from their depositors and from the 
government. A large part of their depositors' money 
they put out at interest on these mortgages, etc.. 
and all of the national bank notes furnished them 
by the government they can also use for their own 
profit. To be sure, they secure the government for 
these bank notes but the government pays them interest 
on that security, and they get interest from the people 
again for the bank notes. 

^ow, two per cent, government bonds are at a pre- 
mium the world over. That means that the govern- 
ment can get all the money it wants at two per cent. 
or less interest. It follows, then, that the government 
could loan the people all the money they can give 
security for at two per cent, interest. Of course the 
government would not lend on poor security. (Banks 
do this sometimes when tempted by promises of large 
interest.) If the government loaned money to the 
farmers and merchants and home-makers at two per 
cent., that would establish the price of everybody's 
money. Rich people are now loaning to the govern- 
ment at that rate ; so it is hard to see why they 
should be permitted to collect eight per cent, from 
the poor. An incalculable amount of poverty and 
suffering could be avoided by this reform. How 
much pleasure we should take in making our deposits 
in the government's banks where the money would 
be serving the common good while it was being kept 
safely for us ! If any one can make a profit by loan- 
ing a portion of our deposits at two per cent. I am 
sure we should be pleased for it to be the govern- 
ment. 



UNNECESSARY POVERTY 



And there is the matter of wages, some of the 
injustices of which are removable. 

A great many people work hard, and long hours 
and every day, and yet do not get enough pay for 
their work to live decently, nor even to feed and 
clothe and protect themselves and those dependent 
on them. The sweat-shop workers of the great cities 
may be taken as examples. It is not nearly so neces- 
sary that we buy clothes so cheaply as we do, as it is 
that the garment-makers get living wages. There 
should be arbitrary interference with what we are 
accustomed to calling private affairs, for the sake of 
preserving the lives and health and morals of these 
workers. Freedom of contract should be preserved 
so far as it can be, but the right to life takes prece- 
dence over freedom of contract, and there should be 
a decent minimum wage secured by law. There are, 
of course, various ways in which this principle could 
be effected, and there need be involved no danger 
whatever of providing for the lazy, nor of violating 
any beneficent natural law. There may be ever so 
much poverty in the world that we know not how to 
cope with, but surely we have reached that stage of 
sanity and civilization where we can insist that the 
faithful and competent worker shall be paid decently 
for his or her work. If "natural" law will not 
secure this, then arbitrary law must be employed. 

The causes of poverty may be classified as those 
of conditions and those of character. The condi- 
tions under which life is lived are responsible for a 
large percentage of the poverty in the world, and 
there are many more of these conditions than those 
to which I have referred. I do not say that all of 
the conditions that breed poverty can be removed by 
any practical method now known, but there is so 
much that can be done in the bettering of conditions 



UNNECESSARY POVERTY 

that we cannot easily imagine how much better and 
happier the world would be if this were done. 
Unsanitary and unsafe tenements are not necessary 
conditions of human life, nor is child-labor in the 
factories, nor the unbridled selfishness of greedy 
oppressors, nor five per cent, dividends on immense 
blocks of watered stocks, nor the corruption of 
officials by enfranchised corporations, nor high-tariff 
prices for the necessities of life. Not only can these 
wrongs be righted ; they cannot be perpetuated. 
The unnecessary becomes unbearable, and then it 
passes away. 

It is equally true that, in the realm of character- 
causes, much of the occasion for poverty can be 
avoided. Ignorance is a cause of -poverty, and we 
are overcoming ignorance as has never been done 
before. Incompetence is another cause, to overcome 
which we should give every boy and girl in school a 
training in some useful occupation. Indolence is 
most difficult to cope with, and must be conquered 
in each life by its own struggle. Extravagance and 
wastefulness and the rest of the characteristics of 
many who, through their own fault, suffer poverty, 
are not removable by any external or arti ficial means ; 
but we can say that they tend to decrease with an 
improvement in conditions and education ; and it 
must also be said that but a small part of the poverty 
of the world is caused by the faults of the poor 
themselves. The extravagance and wastefulness of 
many wealthy people become hideous in contrast 
with that which is indulged in by the indigent poor. 

Not all poverty is necessary. 

There is so much unnecessary poverty that we 
cannot compute its extent. Unnecessary poverty 
should be removed. 

The removing process must be just to all. 

But: 

The cancer must come out, or the patient will die. 



Tflncomfortable Wealth 




UR programs for reform should never be 

Omade in the interests of merely one class 
of people. We should realize that what- 
ever will truly benefit one will benefit all, 
as whatever harms one harms all. At 
bottom the interests of the rich and the 
poor are identical. Poverty is a curse to 
the rich, and the corrupting affluence of 
the inflated is a curse to the poor. It is 
equally true that the rich receive great 
benefit from the virtues of the poor, and 
the poor catch a reflex benefit from the 
pleasures of the rich. Society is a unit by so inflexi- 
ble a law of nature, that even the sharp class-dis- 
tinctions by which it is rent cannot destroy its vital 
integrity. No measures, therefore, should be advo- 
cated in sympathy for the poor which would work 
any measure of injustice to the rich, for such an 
injustice would be at once and always a curse to the 
poor also. 

The only way to really benefit anybody, is to 
benefit everybody. 

We are accustomed to consider that the oppres- 
sion and extortion that are carried on among us 
today are to the benefit of the strong and the 
undoing of the weak. That these wrongs bear with 
terrible weight upon the weak is generally acknowl- 
edged, but their reflex action in the destruction of 
the strong is but faintly realized. 



yy COMFORTABLE WEALTH 

The oppressors are ultimately the greatest suffer- 
ers from their own oppressions. 

In the first flush of prosperity there is usually a 
great real gain. Mr. and Mrs. Newricb and their 
children get education, culture, travel, health, expe- 
rience, self-development, and many real blessings 
that are denied to the poor. They revel in the stored- 
up treasures of the world. The art and science of 
the past become their heritage, and they buy and 
enjoy the products of present genius. But what 
their money will buy their labor will not produce. 
They become parasites upon the genius and skill, as 
well as the labor of the other classes. Their native 
powers deteriorate. They become nauseated with 
advantage. They turn to the shallow and flippant 
and purposeless, — and they are lost. 

There are few things in this world more pathetic 
than the heroic effort that some rich men's grand- 
sons are making to maintain their manhood and 
really be of some account in the world. They are 
cursed not simply by their wealth, but by the poverty 
of the poor who deprive them of the real opportuni- 
ties of life. 

They tell me that the American farmer has ceased 
doing his own chores. He keeps a "Pole "who 
works for his "keep." One of that Pole's sons will 
own that farm, and another will be elected to the 
legislature. 

We want no equality except that which is posi- 
tively demanded by natural law. and inheres in the 
nature of things. The need of all human beings for 
food, for instance, is approximately equal. By a 
blessed natural law, the rich man's stomach refuses 
to hold a bushel. And these beneficent natural laws 
are everywhere at work punishing and oppressing 
the oppressor, reversing conditions, and gradually 
equalizing and elevating the whole of society. 



UNCOMFORTABLE WEALTH \ 

Wealth is a good thing. 

Commonwealth is a divine thing. ' 

Wealth would hurt nobody if nobody had too 
little of it and nobody too much. 

Comfortable wealth is like peace, strength, light, 
truth. It cannot be based on injustice. 

Uncomfortable wealth is one of the saddest spec- 
tacles to be seen in this new century. It frets and 
worries over little things, and big. It writhes in the 
swelter of misappropriated good things. It suffers 
the fierce penalties of perpetual maladjustments. It 
is not in harmony with the law of God nor with the 
law of man. It can escape neither the upper nor 
the nether millstone. It pays a penalty for every 
pang of poverty, and suffers degradation for every 
outrage of justice. 

It is built on the sand. 

Do not be deceived by appearances. It looks like 
fun, but there is no real fun apart from justice. War 
looks like fun to small boys and to some small men 
but the reality is fearfully grim. The discomforts 
that are suffered by the beneficiaries of extortion' 
are of serious magnitude. 

The servants of the over-rich do not serve for 
love, nor in a loving manner, but are a source of con- 
tinual vexation and trouble. They must always be 
watched. Even their respectful behavior has to be 
bought with money. They do not radiate happiness, 
cheer, peace, culture, and strength to the employer 
and his children in whose presence they ever are. 
This is very trying and really sad. 

Their friendships are not secure. Money in gross 
inequality begets envy, jealousy, strife, suspicion. 
Friendship that is contingent on the security of 
banks and bonds is most unsatisfactory. Even while 
it lasts it lacks that element of soul-satisfaction 



UNCOMFORTABLE WEALTH 



which blesses the inter-relationships of the common 
life. 

"I wonder if he loves me for my money?" she 
ever asks. 

Uncomfortable wealth is always afraid of vio- 
lence, but the poor widow sleeps in safety without 
bolting the door. 

The task of holding on to it is simply frightful. 

The labor involved in spending it works havoc 
with "one's nerves, you know." 

But most trying of all is the necessity of being 
the Lord's Steward with this money that has been 
wrung from the necessities of the poor ! The Lord 
must be honored with it all, and it is really very vex- 
ing to know just how to do it. Here is discomfort 
enough. Of course the poor who do not give the 
rich credit for any conscientious scruples will not 
appreciate this, but we hope there are not many 
such. Conscience is no whit keener in the poor than 
in the rich. Conscientious discomfort has embit- 
tered many a cup that was full to overflowing. 

The Lord's Steward has a big job on his hands. 

The World Almanac for 1902 gives a list of about 
three thousand five hundred American millionaires. 
In many cases their stewardship covers quite a num- 
ber of millions. For one man to own a hundred mil- 
lions is a matter of but little comment. We have a 
way of becoming accustomed to anything. But it is 
not so easy for the millionaires themselves to become 
accustomed to it. They have to pose. The loss of 
poise is a very serious matter. It tends to shorten 
life. Pose makes great demands on vitality. It pre- 
vents child-bearing. It does not easily keep sweet. 
Poise is that mental and spiritual balance that the 
gods are supposed to know. It is known also by a 
few people who have neither too much wealth nor 



U N COMFORTABLE WE ALT H 1 

too sore poverty. Equilibrium of soul is too easily 
ruined by money or by poverty. An equilibrium of 
society would help the case. 

Let us pity those who are uncomfortably rich. 
They need our sympathy. Be good to them, and be 
patient with them, and it will soon appear that they 
are very much like yourself. The utmost of kindness 
would surely deprive them of the opportunities by 
which they oppress the poor and damn themselves 
and mar the face of God's human world. Love for 
the rich would break their monopolies, and set right 
the economic injustices by which they work the 
impoverishing of the common people and their own 
fall. 

They ought not to be uncomfortable. 



flfeammonism 



; : ill 



'm'% -Mf 



AMMONISM is the wrong which men do 

Mwhen they esteem money above manhood. 
It is not the mere working for money, nor 
handling money, nor owning money, as 
some extremists think. It is not the 
honest work that an honest man does for 
an honest living, in which money plays a 
part. It is the enthronement of money 
and that for which money stands, in the 
place of regal manhood. 

Humanhood should be supreme. The 
common right to the largest life should 
frame the laws of the world. The sanctity of a soul 
should be the highest consideration in human affairs. 
The conservation and development of life should be 
the supreme motive in action. 
But it is not so. 

The race for wealth has outstripped the race for 
manhood. Many people are so engrossed in the 
effort to get money that they do not even know that 
they are after it instead of character. 

They have not thought that there is a difference. 
The women are just as bad as the men, if not 
worse, in this matter. Men always try to be what 
women want them to be. The women are clamoring 
for money. They want money at any cost. They 
want men with money— or substitutes for men— so 
that the money comes. The natural feminine de- 
mand for manhood has been drowned in this clamor 



M A M M ONI S M 14. 

for money. But here and there a woman who has 
done this learns that she made a tragic mistake, and 
wishes she had demanded a man. 

This is only a temporary streak the women have 
taken. It will not last. It is impossible to destroy 
permanently the native idealism of a woman. 

The accepted rule of life among men is first of all 
to make money ; after that, and subject to that, to 
be approximately honest, courteous, even generous, 
if you can. But these are secondary considerations. 
Character is a secondary consideration. What is 
character worth, they ask, if you have not got money ? 
Money rules. Wealth is the key to position and 
power. You may be as good as Saint John, but your 
name is "Dennis" just the same if you haven't a 
good fat bank account. 

Virtue without cash is a back number. 

When the exceptional man sacrifices money to a 
principle of idealism or integrity, when he releases 
wealth in order to cling to character, or when wealth 
evades him because he has wooed character most 
ardently, then there is for him in this present world 
just one thing. It isn't admiration. It's pity. 

The time is coming on this earth when you will 
pity the fellow who loves money for itself, and you 
will admire him whose victory over greed has left 
him free to roam the vast realms of self-develop- 
ment, and to revel in unmeasured riches of thought, 
of character, of soul-sensation, and in the humor, 
peace and poise of a universe of purpose. 

He doesn't need your pity. 

You do need to admire him. 

This insane desire to own things, this scramble 
for stuff, this wild passion for old junk, this inordi- 
nate greed for trash, is a mad fever that must burn 
itself out and make room for a better, truer, calmer, 
greater life. 



M A M M ONI S M 



Equanimity has gone to the winds. Lust, fed by 
boundless advertisements, has corrupted the hearts 
of people. They have gone after thing-gods. They 
go to church, but they worship tilings. They want 
more things than they know what to do with. They 
pay more for them than they are worth. 

There is another way : "To earn a little and to 
spend a little less." It is a quiet, strong, purposeful 
way that is superior to the tyranny of gew-gaws and 
furniture, and lives on a loftier plane than that 
where every thought is "to have and to hold." It 
owns pretty nearly everything, and enjoys everything 
that is in sight. It is the way wherein prosperity 
has peace for her company, and poverty draws on 
those resources oT the soul and of trie common life 
that are always to be found in reserve. It is the 
way wherein everything is useful and blessed in the 
using. We will not walk in it until we learn that 
the life is more than an automobile, and the body 
than a spring suit. 

There aren't half enough things in the world yet. 
Go on with your making and serving and worshiping 
and multiplying of things ! Some day we shall have 
enough. Everything will be put to use. And the 
hearts of the people will return to life and character 
and culture, and we shall have time to be polite. 

Mammonism makes a trolley-car run over a little 
child's body. It sends nations to war. It perpe- 
trates great national injustices. It keeps members 
of the same church and the same family in a com- 
petitive warfare. It robs the poor. It despises and 
destroys human life. It deprives the widow and 
orphan of their heritage. It crushes the weak with- 
out mercy. 

It is murder. 

Do you know that the force that sends young 



M A M M N I S M 



women down the road of shame comes to them from 
without, and from you ? It has two elements. It 
consists first of a real need for money on the part of 
girls, for instance, who are compelled to fill some 
industrial position for nothing or three to five dollars 
a week. And the other element is the false standard 
of life which is set up in your home. That standard 
is the regnancy of things— mere trash— to the getting 
of which your life is enslaved, and enslaves all other 
lives so far as you have influence. 

The poor dear girl has followed your standard. 

The worst form of prostitution in this world is 
the surrender of idealism to pelf. The sordid soul 
has fallen lower than the bawdy-house. Where there 
is hardening of the heart, and closing of the eyes, 
and no repentance, is a dangerous path to tread. 
The putting of wealth before the culture of the 
humanities will take every faith or hope or love out 
of your life. When you lose your ideals, you are lost 
indeed. 

And it is so with nations. In America we had an 
ideal of Democracy, of liberty and justice, of the 
glorification of the common life. I do not say that 
we have lost that ideal, but it has been terribly dis- 
figured of late, and I do say that the ravages of the 
modern spirit of Mammonism, if unchecked, will 
utterly destroy that ideal. That ideal cannot co- 
exist with an aristocracy of wealth, a national policy 
of unadulterated commercialism, and a popular 
standard which consists of the almighty dollar. 

We shall lose our ideal — unless we overthrow 
Mammomsm. 

It contains the law of its own destruction. It 
has made the trust as a means of relieving the people 
from the curse. The more things and money it cre- 
ates, the cheaper will these things be. The elevation 



M A M M N I S M 



of the masses will sanctify wealth by making it com- 
mon. Idealism will re-assert itself. 

To-day we love things. By and by we shall learn to 
use things and to love people. 



flfoebtocritE 




EN have always progressed toward higher 
stages of the heart's desire. The prog- 
ress is first a matter of the quality of 
desire, and then a matter of reaching it. 
The ability to realize the heart's desire 
has uniformly kept pace with the eleva- 
tion of the desire toward the ethical 
standard. We have attained so much of 
pure desire that we no longer consider 
asceticism the highest law of life. We 
want what is right and we proceed to get 
it. Desire will never supersede obliga- 
tion, but it will rise to the higher plane of divine 
passion, where egoism and altruism merge into the 
graceful harmony of the right life. 

The positive, aggressive, progressive side of 
character cannot be dispensed with. W r e have but 
recently learned that it isn't wicked. Creative 
humanhood has begun to assert itself. "Greater 
things than these shall ye do." 

But before our optimism soars, or our faitli 
makes her assertion, let us consider the case. 

Mediocrity is like weak tea thinned with cold 
water, and sweetened with New Orleans molasses. 
It is a stagnant pond. 

It is insipidity of character, having neither 
strength nor significance ; without convictions, opin- 
ions, or even tastes; and knowing no guiding pur- 
pose nor invigorate passion. 



MEDIOCRITY 



Do not confuse it with poise. Poise is beyond the 
peaks of passion. You will never reach poise until 
passion has tossed you, and burned you. and scourged 
you. Mediocrity is a flat country, too low for winds, 
too damp for fires, too quiet for music, too safe for 
strength, too good for greatness, too well kept for 
any possible pleasure, and too sanctimonious for any 
worthy issue of life. 

There is a large population. 

Men and women who take no keen or large interest 
in the current life and progress and problems of the 
world, need to have something happen to them. 
They need ideas, opinions, a vital interest in some- 
thing, an absorbing passion for something. Their 
lives need force and purpose. Let it be even reac- 
tionary and retrogressive; let it contend against 
progress, and persecute heretics, and fight against 
the reforms that the world is making, if it must. 
But let it be purpose and force of some kind. Paul 
the zealot makes Paul the apostle ; but you cannot 
make something out of nothing. They who oppose 
the truth are often its best friends, and not seldom 
become its advocates. But the people who don't 
care, who have neither interest nor passion, who 
swallow a thunderbolt of truth like a fresh caramel, 
and who take no more conscious part in the awful 
and magnificent life of the world than a mule does 
in wireless telegraphy, are people who will not help, 
who will not think, and upon whom there is no 
reliance. 

Mediocrity is worse than perversity. 

One thing that drags men down to such a level, is 
the modern method of the division of labor which 
makes a machine of every operative. The great 
industrial masses who are useful simply in the opera- 
tion of machines, at which they stand and work in 



MEDIO C B IT Y 



simple and almost automatic motions while the 
hours multiply into weeks and the weeks into years 
and the years drag themselves out to the dismal end 
of usefulness, are almost literally crushed into medi- 
ocrity. For these, this is not the era of opportunity, 
nor the brilliant age of invention. They must not 
think, they may not dream : high purpose and lofty 
passion would cost them their jobs, and then who 
would pay the rent? And so they fill their places, 
patiently plodding, without protest, until some one 
makes a machine to do their work ! 

This patience is stupid nobility. 

The man who does protest is a noble fool. 

I consider that there is nothing finer, sweeter, 
truer in the universe than the common life. The 
common life isn't mediocrity. The common life has 
its majority share of the initiative and potency of 
the world. The common life is all a throb with pas- 
sion, purpose, conflict and desire, save that it has its 
proportion of insipidity. 

It is the mediocrity in high places that tries our 
souls. A combination of puerility, senility, and 
middle-life stupidity, in the pulpit or in the legisla- 
ture, is the sad sight. Leaders of men ! and yet they 
are as little aware that anything is going on in 
human life as was poor Marie Antoinette in 1789. 
They preach and legislate, and it all has about as- 
much connection with the actual progress of life and 
events as a cock's crow has with astronomy. 

I'm always very sorry for the rank and file in 
the army and the navy. I don't like to see a man's 
initiative taken away from him. If he had a little 
real fighting to do every day or so, I suppose there 
would be opportunity for some personal action, choice 
and ingenuity. But he doesn't fight. Hisoperations 
are all thought out for him by some one else. That 



MEDIOCRITY 



is the way it is with the thinking of lots of people. 
Somebody else does it for them. They are automa- 
tons. They can preach and edit newspapers, but 
oh, my ! the sameness of it all points to a common 
origin ! 

I have heard people sing in prayer-meeting, "Oh 
to be nothing, nothing ! " and some of them have just 
about succeeded. It is a sad success. It is a case of 
no thoughts, no opinions, no ideas, no information, 
and very little usefulness or value. The "broken 
and empty vessel " is often so thoroughly smashed 
that it cannot be mended. There are so many of 
them lying about in the back alleys and rubbish 
heaps that the church ought to be unwilling to man- 
ufacture them. If you know a man, tell him to be 
good for something. Don't help him to be a nobody. 
He should read, and criticize, and think, and plan, 
and analyze. He should take every problem in the 
world into his infinite mind. He should carry every 
burden in the world on his limitless shoulders. He 
should live above and beyond his job, be superior to 
his boss, and work miracles transcending his machin- 
ery. He needs, above all things, self-realization, and 
he will find it in a vigorous and tireless self-outgoing. 
He should have desires, trained and powerful. He 
should have the ability to bring these desires to pass. 

If you want to be nothing, what do you live for? 
Your room would be useful to somebody else. 

We're all looking, and always looking, for the 
man or woman who wants to be something. Desire 
to be, ripens into determination, and determination 
does it. You should want to be, not merely some- 
thing, but a whole lot ; yes, even everything ! Please 
don't confuse being with having. Have nothing, if 
it must be so, but BE everything, the Whole Thing- 
all you can apprehend and aspire to. Be all the man- 



ME BIOCBITY 



hood or womanhood you ever saw or dreamed of. Be 
the highest and truest and greatest you know about 
humanity. Be all you can remember or think about 
the greatest that ever lived. Be all you can hope or 
imagine about the children of God. 

You ought to have ideas, at least, about these 
questions of social reform. 



(Sommercialtsm 




OMMERCIALISM bas been defined as that 

C barter which men carry on in things that 
are not properly the subjects of trade. 
The land, for instance, and public fran- 
chises, and the votes of legislators, should 
not be bought and sold. If the public 
right and possession were never surren- 
dered to individuals, capital would lose 
almost all of its power to oppress. The 
public franchise is the most important 
and valuable asset of all these private cor- 
porations that constitute the bulwarks 
of modern commercialism. The railroads, the tele- 
graphs, the street cars, the telephones, can be con- 
ducted only by the use of property that belongs to 
the people ; and therefore only as the private corpo- 
rations get control and private use of this public 
property can they carry on these enterprises. When 
a private corporation gets "control of public property 
or a public right, we say that it has obtained a fran- 
chise. A state transfers to a private company a 
measure of its right of eminent domain, and the 
private company then proceeds to take possession of 
both public and private lands for the purposes of its 
enterprise. It is recognized that this enterprise will 
be of advantage to the general public, and herein is 
the use of eminent domain justified. 

Now, if the government would always do for the 
general public those things that it recognizes as nee- 



COMMEBCIALIS M 



essary for the general good, and which cannot be 
done except by government aid and authority,— it* in 
other words the government would never sell its 
birthright in franchises— then we should have a much 
more just and stable state of things. 

The power to oppress comes from the government. 

The Standard Oil Company would never have had 
the power to steal and crush and murder except for 
its management of privately-owned railroads. 

Privately-owned railroads have made possible the 
high price and limited supply of coal. 

Men who own coal mines are at the mercy of the 
railroad companies. 

So is the Post-Office Department. 

The public franchise is not properly a subject of 
trade. It cannot be transferred to a private indi- 
vidual or company without carrying with it some 
measure of power to oppress the public' It is in its 
very nature the taking of a natural right away from 
the people. It is an abdication of government. 

Governments used to farm out their taxes. That 
is, they invested individuals or companies, under 
certain conditions, with the powei to collect taxes 
from the people. This was the government's own 
business, but the tax-gatherers looked upon their 
franchises as their private property, just as railroad 
companies do now. It was weakness in the govern- 
ments to farm out their taxes. It is similar weak- 
ness in the United States government that it now 
sells or gives away its public highways and the very 
arteries of its life under the false fear that it cannot 
manage these things for itself. 

The government must not needlessly interfere 
with private business, but railroads are not private 
business. They are built by dint of the highest 
governmental prerogative. They require special 



C OMMEB CIALISM 



government protection. The judicial branch of gov- 
ernment is always running some of them under its 
receivers. The government cannot get rid of the 
railroad responsibility, even though it does of the 
ownership and profits and service. 

Franchises are the government's title-deeds to 
existence. 

The government should not abdicate. 

Commercialism is that spirit which makes barter 
of human life. The life of government is but a 
modicum of this traffic. It extends into a thousand 
avenues of the common life, and profanes the holiest 
of human relationships for considerations of filthy 
lucre. The wage-system measures all human service 
in exact terms of money, so far as the wage-system 
extends. Fortunately it has not yet been extended 
to all the relationships of the home, so it is possible 
to find mother-love and filial devotion and some fra- 
ternal services that are not paid for in exact cash. 
But the profanation has gone far. The daily-service- 
love which a man puts forth with his brain and 
muscle is measured and limited and valued and 
depreciated in cold spiritless cash. Cash is made the 
motive of the service, and service-love is destroyed. 
Cash is made the equivalent of the service, and 
gratitude-love is destroyed. Cash stands for just so 
much human life, and humanity-love is destroyed. 
Chattel slavery was an old way of doing this. Wage 
slavery is the present method. 

A medium of exchange is a necessity, but this 
necessity is not justification for the degradation of 
strong, beautiful, divine human labor to the level of 
dirt. There must be exchange, and it must be 
adjusted by some medium, but the services ought 
still to be given and received as the loving outpour- 
ings of consecrated life. 



C O MM E R CI A L I 8 M 



The black sweat of the coal miner is as pure as 
the morning dew. 

The grimy hands of the iron-worker are as noble 
as the mountains of God. 

The patient stitches of the weary "sweater " are 
as beautiful as a golden sunset. 

The modest service of the shop-girl is as sweet as 
the song of birds. 

If love be there. 

Money doesn't buy love, but it buys love's stock- 
in-trade, and then love has to go out of business. 

Some marriages are commercial arrangements. 

Some parents introduce a sort of commercial 
adjustment between themselves and their children 
as early as possible, so that the children will form 
" habits of thought that lead to success." 

Some churches are commercial institutions. 

Commerce is a good thing. It is a religious func- 
tion. If religion, as an art. is the art of relationshi ps, 
then commerce has been a hand-maiden to religion 
in promoting the relationships of men. The more 
commerce the better. The more exchange of fellow- 
ship and intermingling and mutual knowledge, the 
better. The more goods made and bought and sold, 
the better. But this must all be done in the spirit 
of service, the spirit of mutualism, the spirit of the 
universe. It must be done in some way that will be 
appropriate to people who get together on Sunday 
and talk about being the children of God. 

Commercialism is barter in human life. 

The laborer is guilty of it if he has no other 
motive in his work than the money he shall receive. 

The employer is guilty of it if he considers the 
labor he hires as worthy of no more than the money 
he pays for it. 

The merchant is guilty of it who does not permit 



COMMERCIALISM 



the girls behind the counter ever to sit down during 
"hours." 

The manufacturer is guilty of it who takes little 
children into his factory, and so compels men to work 
at children's wages. 

The landlord is guilty of it who, for "economy " 
neglects the sanitation of homes, and so poisons his 
tenants with filth. 

Commercialism adulterates food, makes shoddy 
goods, makes paper shoes, imposes ridiculous medi- 
cines upon the credulous but suffering sick, foists 
sham articles of every kind upon the common mar- 
ket, does cheap and dangerous work in every depart- 
ment of industry, and advertises all this stuff with- 
out any regard, beyond expediency, for the truth. 

A fair exchange is no robbery, but if a fair ex- 
change were all the motive in trade, we should not 
be under the curse of commercialism to-day. A fair 
exchange is the very thing the world wants— and 
lacks. A fair exchange will not esteem a man's life 
and woman's honor as of less account than a paltry 
dollar of gain. A fair exchange will not crucify the 
ideal of work-day relationships upon the cross of 
profit and loss. 

It will promote love and peace and the good life. 

Commercialism gives its own tone to the voice, 
and puts a peculiar look in the eye. Have you no- 
ticed these ? The cold steely gaze that looks right 
through human souls without seeing them, that 
passes over art and nature without an emotion, that 
would blush at an unknown tear of sympathy, and 
that sweeps every horizon for dollars, and dollars only, 
is a product of this modern spirit. And the hard, 
theatrical voice that tells of none of the finer life of 
the soul, that sings no music, and that betrays none 
of the homely tenderness of natural warmth and 



C OMMEBCIALI S 3/ 



affection, is a product of the repression of commer- 
cial secrets and the "necessary" enforcements of 
commercial requirements. The heart is hardened 
against all the world, the mind is turned from all its 
problems, and the sympathies refuse to go out to its 
needs, because the man is engrossed in the pursuit 
of gain. His life is a bargain counter. The "sacri- 
ficed goods " are his fellowmen. 

Business is business. 

Some of it is hell. 



Mar 




HERE are as many kinds of war as there 

Tare of religion. One of them is religious 
war. We need not consider it here. So 
long as there is a "church militant," I 
suppose this kind of war will be waged. 
How much a false religious teaching 
may be considered responsible for the 
bloody wars between nations, we shall 
not attempt to say ; but that it is re- 
sponsible for the cruel warfare of indi- 
vidual competition, is proven by the fact 
that today such teaching condones and 
approves of the whole terrible business. 

While the wars in South Africa and the Philip- 
pines are killing off a few men now and then by 
violent process, the competitive system of industry 
is killing off men, women, and children daily by a 
subtler and more effective process than that of gun- 
powder, and in larger numbers. No more bitter war- 
fare than this was ever known. It gives no quarter, 
and knows no mercy. Of course there are some love 
and tenderness in the world, and these mitigate the 
competitive strife to some extent ; but they are no 
part of it, and such influences as they have are for 
the overthrow of the system. 

Competition is anarchy. It is the antithesis of 
organization. It is the opposite of system and order. 
It is every man for himself. It is narrow, shameful 
selfishness and wanton waste. It is the outward and 



WA R 30 

visible sign of the inward and spiritual disgrace of 
commercialism. 

We know it only in modified forms. Artificial law 
prevents competitors from pursuing some especially 
dangerous lines of effort to promote their interests. 
They cannot kill, burn, and cheat, nor overreach 
and libel their enemies with entire impunity. The 
law is kept busy placing bounds to competition. 
And on the other hand, natural law is always oppos- 
ing it, for natural law flows toward association, 
co-operation. In this way competition is being more 
and more limited. Free competition is unknown. 
Absolute anarchy must ever be a dream. Both 
natural and artificial laws are ever working to pro- 
duce order, system, method, adjustment, co-opera- 
tion ; so we fortunately do not know all the evils 
that untempered competition might produce. 

But we know enough. 

Men that are inspired with fraternity, brother- 
hood, helpfulness, are set to fighting one another. 
They have a common object in view, but they proceed 
upon the assumption that there is not enough for all, 
that some one must starve; and so the struggle is 
actuated by a determination not to be in the starv- 
ing class. The struggle for existence calls forth 
some heroism even in this cruel fight of insane com- 
petition, but the struggle for the existence of others 
will be far more heroic, and will call for a higher 
type of courage and strength and manhood. The 
survival of the strongest has doubtless contributed 
to the development and dominance of the best types, 
in a general way, but the survival of the fittest, 
which will be the survival, oftentimes, of the weak- 
est and most delicate and least able to fight, will be 
a law that will evolve yet higher and higher types. 
Warfare is not the only law of life, nor is it by any 



31 W A B 

means the highest. Warfare in industry has spurred 
some on to strenuous action, no doubt, but how much 
it has impeded and retarded civilization, and how 
often it has obliterated whole decades of progress, 
cannot easily be told. 

The individualistic industrial conflict could not 
last. "Community of interest," is no new thing ; it 
was discovered long ago. Certain classes of laborers 
and certain classes of capitalists in these days have 
rediscovered it and taken some steps in recognition 
of it. 

They haven't taken it seriously yet. 

But co-operation has won its way far enough now 
so that the conflict in its heat is a conflict of class 
against class. The competition for work is between 
union and non-union men. The competition for 
trade is between trust and trust. The competition 
for markets is between nation and nation. 

This is a little better than every man for himself. 

Strikes are assuming immense proportions. Strikes 
are a small part of industrial warfare. In strikes 
the laborer does his part of the fighting. The cap- 
italist does his when you don't hear about it. He 
reduces wages, imposes conditions, and changes 
"hands " as quietly as possible, and as constantly as 
his interests demand. His fight is a still hunt. Labor 
makes a fuss. This is its only weapon. The State 
militia is called out, a few men are shot, three police- 
men are hit with brick-bats; and the war is over? 
Oh, no ! It is just another change of scene back 
again to the office and the desk of the time-keeper. 

It will not go on forever. 

The employes of the Post-Office Department do 
not go on strike. 

The men who pay them are not trying to "do" 
them. 



WA R j 

The police and fire departments, the water works 
workers and the street-cleaners do not strike. 

This is because, just so far as they are inside the 
realm of government service, they are outside of the 
arena of industrial conflict. 

Bo they work with less ambition ? 

Does paternalism feed the school-teachers? 

Do they lack incentive ? 

Has the government fought with its civil-service 
employes? 

Are they lazy? 

It is universally known that the best services of 
its citizens are always at the command of a govern- 
ment, and that the most peaceful and prosperous and 
fairly-treated workers are those who are employed by 
the whole people. 

There is an end to industrial warfare. 

There is also in view an end to warfare between 
nations. We are saying this in these days notwith- 
standing the fact that we are in the midst of very 
stubborn wars waged on questionable grounds by the 
two foremost nations of peace-loving people in the 
world, and every nation is making unparalleled 
preparations for war, as though universal peace had 
never been a dream. 

But it has been a dream. 

There was a conference at the Hague. 

There will be others. 

These very preparations for war are erecting the 
most formidable obstacles to it ever known in the 
world. They may fight a little yet to try their new 
tools, and to tax the world's common-sense, and pro- 
voke its better judgment; but before the irresistible 
shell will have struck the invulnerable ship we shall 
have a Universal Peace Treaty. 

We have gotten ahead wonderfully. 



? WAR 

When you think where we came from, how much 
tiger there is in us, how far down the scale we started 
to rise from, and what bad habits our ancestors had, 
it is surely a matter for much congratulation that we 
behave as well as we do. Our forbears used to fight 
just for the sheer love of it— sometimes. We do not 
do that now. In later days it was necessary to keep 
a gun on the mantle-piece, or give up house-keeping. 
Even that is no longer necessary. There was a time 
when there was no other known way to settle dis- 
putes and establish order and keep peace than by 
going to war. That is not the case today. 

Isn't it good not to be savages any more? 

It is also pleasant to contemplate the fine manner 
in which some people behave under the competitive 
system. 

They give the competitive system the "go-by." 

These remarkable people do not take any willing 
advantage of the prevailing industrial ethics to en- 
rich themselves at the expense of others. They make 
room and opportunity for others. They look out for 
the business interests of other people. They refuse 
to oppress the poor. They do not act as if they be- 
lieved in the competitive system one bit. They have 
stopped singing "Onward, Christian Soldiers, March- 
ing as to War," and are now trying to " walk in love 
as dear children." 

Thank God for the exceptions. 

They may prove the rule— but they disprove that 
the prevailing wronar is necessary. 



Class ^legislation 



****** 






EGLSLATIOX is properly divided into 

I general legislation, and special legisla- 
tion. General legislation is that main 
branch of law-making that potentially 
applies with equal force to all the people. 
Special legislation consists of those acts 
of the law-making body that apply only 
to specially designated persons or cases 
because of special circumstances. In 
both of these kinds of legislation, how- 
ever, there is supposed to be but one 
purpose, and that is the common good. 
Even the acts of special legislation referred to are 
always presumably based on the requirements of the 
common good. 

Sow there is another kind of legislation being 
enacted by our law makers which is known as class 
legislation. The term defines itself. It is that leg- 
islation which is designed to benefit only a certain 
class of the people rather than the whole. The class 
benefited may be either the rich or the poor, the 
educated or the ignorant, the powerful or the weak, 
as the case may be. Not all class legislation, by any 
means, is enacted in favor of the strong. 
But most of it is. 

And all of it. whether by rich or poor majorities. 
is pernicious, divisive, and destructive of our best 
political ideals. 

For no class can be dealt with without affecting 



CLASS LEGISLATION 



the whole people. The legislature can enrich some 
only by taxing all. It can enfranchise a corporation 
only by just so far disfranchising the whole body of 
citizens. Society is as universally sensitive to a mo- 
tion in any of its parts as is the etherial substance 
that fills the universe of matter. It can receive 
real benefit only as it is benefited altogether. All 
attempts to legislate the benefit of a class must 
result in loss, disturbance and eventual failure. 

Whatever tends to widen the chasms between 
classes and to intensify class-hatred and strengthen 
class-prejudice is to be lamented and opposed. Legis- 
lation which has this effect, whatever its intrinsic 
merits, is to be deplored. Schismatic legislation is 
one of the most malignant diseases that can attack 
the body politic. It is a crime against the very life 
of government. Whatever may be said as to the 
necessity for class legislation, and much has been 
said, it must be contended that whatever divides 
the sympathies and destroys the ideals of the nation 
should not be done. True national greatness cannot 
be promoted by giving the strong artificial advantages 
over the weak. No measure can be wisely enforced 
by any nation that is designed to pit class against 
class. 

The graduated income tax. 

It will not be unconstitutional when it is seen 
that it applies potentially with equal force to all 
men, making equitable adjustment of the burden of 
government. Until it is so amended, or you are so 
amended, that it seems to do this, you will withhold 
from the measure your support. 

The whiskey and tobacco taxes. 

Taxes upon church property. 

Taxing land. 

Taxing improvements upon land. 



CLASS LEGISLATION 



Personal property -taxes. 

Taxing franchise values. 

Double-taxing mortgaged property. 

You will settle all these matters in your mind 
after insisting first and always that taxation must 
rest equitably upon all the people without regard to 
their social or industrial classification. 

The protective high tariff is class legislation. 

It has its qualified and temporary and short- 
sighted justifications. 

So has the graduated inheritance tax. 

Protection protects a certain class of people. This 
is a small class. It protects the prices of things that 
are to be sold, and incidentally protects the wages of 
a class of laborers. Everybody knows, however, that 
the American capitalist hires the most economical 
labor in the world. Protection doesn't prevent this 
He may pay it more money, but that is simply and 
only because it is worth more. He buys his labor 
and his raw material just as low as he can. and he 
gets as much as he can for his goods. 

Protection keeps up wages somewhat. 

It keeps up prices much more. 

But :— 

''America for Americans " is small potatoes. 

We're not Americans. 

They're Indians. 

We're cosmopolites. 

What's more, we're not little, weak, tender. 

We don't need protection against anything— 

Except ourselves. 

The tariff doesn't do that. 

Poor, dear, little Cuba ! We shouldn't be so afraid 
of her ! We are big and rich and strong. We can 
take down the top rail for Cuba and still keep sweet, 
either with or without beet sugar. This is a great 



C LA S 8 LEGISLATION 



country. I mean the people. And most of the people 
don't classify in any class, and don't want any class 
legislation for their protection, nor for their exploita- 
tion, nor to lessen their taxes, nor to increase them ; 
but wish, merely, that equitable and large adminis- 
tration of affairs which our political system contem- 
plates. 

The theory of "infant industries" is worn out. 
This nation is protecting the very industries that 
Europe and the world stand in awe of for their enor- 
mous size and strength. Our protected industries 
are today selling their products in the very markets 
from which they are protected. They may have 
needed it once, but now industrial Uncle Sam is the 
biggest man in the market. The simple maintenance 
of high prices at home is the most flagrant piece of 
class legislation imaginable. 

We are naturally proud of our big trusts, but we 
can't afford to pay too big a price for them. They 
are doing us many a magnificent service, but we must 
not let them suck all our blood. They are a crowning 
glory to our new-world genius of organization, but we 
cannot let them corrupt the fountain of our national 
life with their money, and turn aside the course of 
justice from the service of the common good of the 
people. 

The common life does no lobbying. 

Its cause is enthroned in the conscience of every 
legislator; 

The petit larceny of class legislation cannot seri- 
ously impede the self-realization of the common life. 
Justice is so much greater than peculation that we 
can safely bank on justice. 

We shall have to help some of the legislators to 
see it that way. 

Big legislators are called statesmen. 



CLASS LEGISLATION 



Statesmen seek and conserve the common good. 

Really there are no classes. The phantoms of 
wealth and poverty that trouble us walk only in the 
night. Wherever the light shines, we discover that 
oil are one. The rich may pilfer and the poor grum- 
ble—of course they ought to grumble— but, seriously, 
we do not know the rich from the poor. I have 
known wealthy people who had more money than 
they could use, but could not afford enough to eat, 
and others who had no internal riches— no wealth of 
personal resources. If we let these pilfer, we have 
the comfort of knowing that there is not much else 
that they can do or have a taste for. And I have 
known people who could not pay their house-rent, 
but whose company and conversation and mental and 
spiritual influence were like the combination of a 
tender benediction and a golden harvest. 

Here is wealth for you. 

Such men and women do not need special legisla- 
tion in their behalf. Their wealth is superior to the 
makers of law. It is like the majesty of the ocean, 
the grandeur of the mountains, the glory of the 
sky. It cannot be pilfered away from them. They 
hold it as the property of all humanity. Whosoever 
will may come and take freely. 

They ought to be able to pay their rent. 



political Corruption 




HE most serious form of it is tax-dodging. 
The man who is dishonest about his taxes 
is a political infidel. There are other 
forms of treason, but that is the subtlest 
and meanest. 

The mother who will not feed her 
child, and the husband who will not sup- 
port his wife, and the guest who robs his 
host, and the thawed-out snake that 
stings the hand that saved it, are like 
the man who makes false returns on his 
tax-duplicate. 
Taxes are the blood of the body politic. 
Genuine patriotism is not the kind that shoulders 
a musket at sixteen dollars a month. It is the kind 
that honestly pays its taxes. To honestly, fully and 
lovingly pay his taxes, is the highest function a man 
can perform in material things. It is his contribu- 
tion in a material way to the welfare of the whole 
people. It is his testimony to a universal fellowship. 
In this way he joins hands with all other men in 
recognition of common obligation, and in attempt 
at common service. And this remains true however 
poor the government may happen to be. 

The nearest approach to the Kingdom of Heaven 
on this earth is not the church, but the State. 
The State has the most to do with human life. 
Therefore it has the most to do with the Divine 
life. 



POLITICAL C O R R U P T I O X 40 

To fail to pay your church dues is bad enough, 
under some circumstances, but to fail to pay your 
taxes is to rob God. 

Chicago property-owners were assessed— 

In 1873 at $312,072,995. 

In 1900 at $276,565,880. 

This is getting poor at a rapid rate. 

It is robbing God — if such a thing be possible. 

The St. Louis boodlers were no worse than is the 
good deacon who doesn't report all his notes, bonds, 
stocks, mortgages, etc., on his "personal" list. 

The greatest tax-dodgers are the corporations. It 
is not true that "corporations have no souls," but it 
is fearfully and awfully true that they do not obey 
their consciences. Corporations should not be let 
off so easily with that no-soul theory. Every stock- 
holder in a corporation is a soul of the corporation. 
with full duties and obligations. The corporation. 
more than the individual, owes its existence and 
prosperity to the government— but dodges taxes. 
This is one of the ways in which the corporation 
makes its "struggle for existence." It is useless to 
censure such cowardly practices. Not until the 
unity of life is seen and believed in will men do 
much better. 

Next to the man who evades paying his taxes is 
the man who steals what other men have paid. Only 
a small percentage of the total amount of public 
moneys is stolen or fraudulently used, yet that per- 
centage is one of the darkest blots on our national 
life. No crime is so heinous as a crime against the 
whole of the people. We abhor and condemn dis- 
honesty in a position of public trust more than in 
any other position, because the crime is committed 
against the greatest possible good and the greatest 
possible number of people. If one thing can be 



41 POLITICAL CORRUPTION 

holier than another, public money is the holiest 
money on earth. When rightfully used, it is cer- 
tainly put to the holiest purposes on earth, for it is 
put to the service of all the people, good or bad, 
G-reek or Jew, seven days in the week. 

The public building is a temple. 

I have so much love and admiration for the 
churches, that I am unable to think which among 
them has best right to be called The Temple of the 
Lord. I am inclined to think that they are all of 
them temples of nice people, and that the Temple of 
the Lord has not been built yet. 

The Capitol is the Temple of Humanity. 

If there be any Temple of God built with hands. 
it is here. No institution known among men is more 
sacred than the State. 

No "church hypocrite " bears such heavy respon- 
sibility and incurs such deep guilt as the "political 
shyster." 

To pilfer from the State is to violate the integ- 
rity of the highest form of social life on earth. 

To destroy the faith of the people in their innate 
ideals of government is to blaspheme against the 
Holy Spirit— the Spirit of the Whole. 

And so, there is nothing in human life quite so 
reprehensible as political corruption— theoretically. 

When Eichard Croker said that "bosses" were 
but the creatures of the public— that they ruled 
simply because the people wished them to rule— he 
told a two-thirds truth. New York City's very next 
election, however, showed that the people could 
change their attitude on the subject. 

The corruption practiced by our bosses at the 
ballot-box, in the council chamber, in the legisla- 
ture, on the bench, in the distribution of offices and 
the misappropriation of funds, deserves all the 



POLITICAL CORRUPTION 42_ 

epithets of censure inside of the dictionary or out- 
side ; but epithets aren't worth while. There's a 
significance that is. 

For these corrupt practices constitute our chief 
visible ground of hope for better things. It is 
natural law, always a promoter of that which is 
right. It is the symptom, not the disease. It is the 
proclamation of wrong; its revealing, its enemy, its 
undoing. The disease is deeper than the symptom. 
The wrong is more profound than the manipulation of 
a caucus. It is at the very heart of government, and 
the heart of the government is in the hearts of the 
people. This disease is the selfishness of the people 
who do not care for the purity of the common life,— 
who will not devote their time and strength to the 
development and nurture of the civic fellowship,— 
who will not forego their personal business ambi- 
tions for the sake of serving, conserving and building 
up the cosmic life in its larger and broader functions. 

The Divine Social Order is waiting for the people. 

It must wait. 

Until the people give themselves to the work of 
government more than they do, government must 
not undertake to enlarge its functions, to run the 
railroads, to own the telegraphs, nor anything else. 
If the government is to serve the people more, then 
the people must do more governing. If we are to 
have more government, we must have it from the 
whole people. 

Surely we don't want the "bosses" to run these 
things for us in the name of the government ! 

If socialism means an enlargement of the forces 
in boss-rule, we don't want it. We have plenty of 
that kind of "ism " now. 

But they say that socialism means that the people 



! POLITICAL C O B B UP T I XT 

will have more to do with governing themselves. I 
like that. 

We can be real glad that some "political men" 
don't ride on railroad passes. 

It would be an exquisite joy to find a dozen. 



{political IJnMfference 




S HAS been already indicated, the corrupt 

A practices in our political system have 
their source and strength in the indif- 
ference of the people. Democracy as a 
theory is eternal in the heart of God, 
but democracy in practice is measured in 
the pint-cup of unselfish human citizen- 
ship. Popular government is a failure 
from the ideal standpoint, but judged by 
other practical affairs, it is the greatest 
success. 

The people should be on the throne, 
but they have abdicated, hence, boss-rule. 

There can be only so much popular government 
as the people are willing to exercise. 

There can be just as much as the people want. 
We need constitutional amendments, direct legis- 
lation, government ownership, proportional repre- 
sentation, and a lot more of similar good things— 
secondarily, when we are willing. 

We need, primarily, to be willing— to govern our- 
selves. 

It would take time— a few hours each week— and 
time is money. 

Liberty always costs a price. 
We get as much as we are willing to pay for. 
One of the most potent causes of the popular in- 
difference to political duties is our system of indirect 
taxation. Our people pay magnificently for the sup- 



POLITICAL IX D IFF E H EX C E j± 

port of the government, but so much of it is done 
unconsciously and without the spirit and purpose of 
supporting the government, that it lacks ethical 
quality and a most important personal value. The 
people need to know what the government costs 
them. The government needs to have the people 
know this— a popular government does. This need 
is not at all for the sake of curtailing the expensive- 
ness of government (although some wastes might be 
avoided), but for the sake of enlisting the interest 
of the citizen along with his money. Popular gov- 
ernment does not cost too much. It does not con- 
sciously cost enough. The people think it's a cheap 
thing, and so they are willing to leave it out-doors 
over night. They are willing for the bosses to have 
it and run it. If it cost more, consciously, it would 
be better cared for and managed by those who pay 
its bills. If the burden rested upon us more heavily 
we should pay more attention to carrying it properly. 
But it doesn't need to be heavier : we simply need to 
know that it is there. By properly carrying it we 
should make it lighter. 

We borrowed our system of indirect taxation 
from monarchial governments. 

It serves their purpose. 

It is adapted to any necessary buncomizing of 
savages and children. 

It is the very contradiction of self-government. 

Intelligent people naturally prefer to pay for 
sugar when they buy sugar, and for clothes when 
they buy clothes, and to pay for government just 
what government needs to cost with a full conscious- 
ness of what they are doing. 

Patriotic people love to pay their just taxes. It 
is a joy and a privilege which they ought not to be 



POLITICAL CO R B UP TIP X ££ 

denied, and it is a sacred consciousness that every 
citizen needs. 

I don't want to be hoodwinked into doing my 
duty without knowing or feeling it. I want the con- 
scious doing of every duty to cost me something and 
thus to bring me something. 

Do not talk about "having" self-government. 
When we "have " it somebody else does it. To be 
governed, is one thing ; to both govern and be gov- 
erned is quite another. Self-government is worth 
doing. It is the largest form of ethical relationships 
in human life. 

The women ought to have a share in it. 

There are many calls to consecration, and there is 
much response. The foreign missionary field gets 
some of it, and "testifying " in prayer-meeting gets 
some, and "reform" gets some, and church affairs 
get a lot; but no line of appeal or duty has such 
force and weight, such importance and dignity, such 
sore need and such sublime significance, as that of 
our political citizenship. Civic duties are the very 
substance of religious life. Our citizenship is on 
this earth. 

It is a noble picture, that of a people trying to 
govern themselves, however many mistakes they 
may make, or however poor work they may make of 
it. It is the proudest effort on earth. It is a most 
beautiful and charming display of moral muscle, 
civic strength, social consciousness, and altruistic 
life. Democracy is a high goal. Let's try to reach 
it ! It is the aim of the cosmic forces in the proto- 
plasm. It is the purpose of the Incarnation. 

It deserves our attention. 



©rtbobor Sin 




THE orthodox view of things a very 

I limited and special use is made of the 

word "sin." Practically none of the 
matters referred to in my previous papers 
are considered as sin from the orthodox 
point of view, but as necessities of com- 
parative unimportance. Sin, in the eyes 
of orthodoxy is a matter of personal 
depravity, individual wrong-doing, the 
state of the heart, the unregenerate 
mind. The subject of essential wrong 
deserves more serious treatment than is 
given it in these papers; but that of the "sins" 
that are categorized, diagnosed and treated in the 
churches, I wish to say something about in this one. 
Most people know two classes of other people, the 
good and the bad. I know only one class of people, 
and they are all somewhat good and somewhat bad. 
I always did like so-called " bad " people, but only 
recently have I learned to like the so-called "good " 
people nearly as much as they need and deserve; to 
be liked. It is easy to love "bad" people, but the 
"good" are more difficult of approach, until you 
learn that they are really bad, too. Then you love 
them. 

Some think that it is easier to love good people. 
Well, the fact of the matter is, that you don't really 
love anybody until you come to that frame of sou 
that essentially loves everybody. When it is once 



ORTHODOX si N 



discovered that the race is one in its nature and one 
in its life, we find, each of us, that in all the sinners 
there is something like us, and in all the saints there 
is something like us, and this draws out our love. 

All men are sinners, and all men are saints. 

There's intemperance. We must overcome it. It 
is a matter of eating beef, and talking politics, and 
playing whist, and reading fiction, as well as drink- 
ing beer. It is a sin of the "saints" as well as a 
sin of the "sinners." Being one of the recognized 
causes of poverty as a sin of the "sinners," it must 
be seen, also, that it is a cause of poverty as a sin of 
extravagance in the "saints." All forms of intem- 
perance will gradually disappear as humanity finds 
its social and individual equilibrium. 

Artificial stimulants will not be desired when we 
live the abundant life. 

There should be chastity in married life. 

The home needs this reform. 

Social equilibrium will help mightily. 

There is along list of these special "sins," but 
what's the use? They are all alike. There is only 
one sin. There is a great difference between choos- 
ing it and turning from it, but everybody does a 
little of both, although, of course, people are not all 
exactly alike in the matter. The amount of whiskey 
a man drinks, or the amount of property he steals, 
will depend not merely upon his free choice as a 
moral agent, but also upon his education, the influ- 
ences that inspire him, his provocations, circum- 
stances, and opportunities. The corruption of souls 
in vice is a matter that we are all more or less en- 
gaged in. No soul sinneth unto itself. I am sinning 
every day in the slums that my eyes do not see, but 
where I live in the lives of others. Also on Wall 
street. My hands are stained with the blood of 



49 ORTHODOX SIN 

Luzon, and my robe is contaminated with the filth 
of the Bowery. No man can ever be entirely saved 
while some men are lost and need saving. A certain 
equilibrium forces itself upon the world, willy-nilly. 

Dear old Bunyan could have left off the "But," 
and could have said truthfully, "There goes John 
Bunyan." He did go to the same jail later, though 
not drunk. 

The sins we commit are only guide-posts to better 
things. I don't know how we should make progress 
except for them. They purify and discipline us. 
They are self-corrective. By sins we are saved. 

We all sin together, and we are all getting over it 
together. The "sinners" of orthodoxy's view are 
"bogy-men." Don't be frightened. If they lie and 
steal and fight and drink and lust and profane — look 
inside of yourself, and look inside of the sacred clois- 
ter. When you have seen these very things there, 
take a second look at the unregenerate and you will 
find also in them integrity, love, probity, chastity, 
idealism. 

There is not an abandoned soul in the universe 
that cannot be loved into life. 

There used to be in the churches a doctrine of 
total natural depravity, which doctrine did sorely 
impede the progress of men toward purity and 
strength. 

Nobody believes it any more. 

It was manufactured for the sake of a theory of 
atonement. 

It was hung about the necks of men like a great 
millstone, and dragged them down, as though they 
had been thrown into the sea. 

You can make a man commit murder by calling 
him a murderer, by getting everybody else to call 



ORTHODOX & I X 50 

him a murderer, by proving it from history or revela- 
tion, and by really convincing him that that is what 
he actually is. The depravity doctrine was not alto- 
gether successful, but it took the starch out of a 
great deal of the finest and highest and grandest 
inspiration of soul the world has ever known. 

It furnished a fundamental excuse for the mean- 
est practices men were able to devise. It degraded 
the noblest work of divine love. It became the 
father of more wrong and failure and weakness and 
corruption than I can write about on this page. I'm 
glad it has gone. 

There was another shift called imputed righteous- 
ness. It's gone, too. That is, the carcasses are here 
yet, but the life has gone out of them. Even the 
preachers are now insisting that righteousness shall 
be the real thing. The imputed kind is out of date. 
We have come to a theory of atonement which is a 
fact of atonement. It involves manhood and woman- 
hood of a high grade. It demands the profoundest 
nobility of character. It assumes the divine nature 
of the race. It proceeds to the most sublime attain- 
ments the mind can conceive. 

" Ba£ " people have a little atonement. 

So have "good " people. 

A better state, a better church, and a better 
social order will help greatly to diminish the amount 
of personal depravity in the world. Individual right 
living will keep pace with social reform. 

Modern commercialism will not outlive the over- 
throw of the theological dogmas in which it has been 
grounded. 

The self-centered spirit will lose the philosophical 
justification which religious teaching has given it, 
and men will become ashamed of it. 



ORTHODOX SIN 



We shall soon begin to pay less attention to the 
punishment of "sins," and more attention to the 
removal of ignorance. 

Let there be light. 



Ipbarisaism 




HARLSAISM is not confined to the Bible, 

Pnor is the balance of it confined to the 
church. Church people as a class are 
the most sterling- and genuine folks in 
the land. Some of them are the mean- 
est. But pharisaism is not copyrighted 
by the class known as hypocrites. Church- 
hypocrisy is to pharisaism as a headache 
would be in comparison to inflammatory 
rheumatism. I doivt want either. 
Pharisaism is sham. 
It is as widely spread as oxygen. 
It is pose.— chronic, everlasting, inveterate pose. 
Do you know what a means of expressing and devel- 
oping beauty and power and goodness pose is? It is 
an art of the gods ! It can do more for the imagina- 
tion in one matinee than the associated charities 
can do for the poor in ten years. 

It is the science of the shekinah !— and right 
there, the moment it becomes chronic, it is a black 
art. full of all uncleanness and dead men's bones. 
Pharisaism is chronic pose — pose gone to seed. 
It is not the peculiar sin of any class of the peo- 
ple. I repeat that it is not the distinctive mark of 
the church-hypocrites. Verily, verily, I say unto 
you. they have their reward. 
Yet they are Pharisees. 

Pharisaism is a damning quality that enters into 
the holy things of life. There are all conceivable 



P H A B I S A I 8 M 



degrees of it. The strong words of denunciation 
used by Jesus would be quite unfair if applied to the 
great masses of people who are tainted with it. 
Those words, however, fit very nicely when applied 
to the scribe type of Pharisee. We have these in 
the twentieth century, and they are at the same old 
job of robbing widows and orphans and other weak 
folk, and for a pretense making long prayers. 

It is not of these that I am writing. 

It is of the "good "people who are not Pharisees — 
But who are infested through and through with 
Pharisaism— some more and some less, of course. 

Everybody pretends to be what he is not. If 
there are any who don't they ought to. Everybody 
poses, or ought to pose. Everybody affects degrees 
of pleasure, or sorrow, or respect, or indignation, 
that are less intense in the heart than in the affec- 
tations. Everybody pretends welcome, appreciation, 
solicitude, and interest in your family history. Kot 
to do this would be impolite, uncivilized, foolish. 
To refuse to conceal your meanness and selfishness 
behind a fair exterior would be brutal- and would 
unfit you for society. You must wear clothes. You 
must be polite whether you feel it or not. You must 
lubricate society with a little virtuous sham. 

But not too much. 

A little salt is a necessary thing, but an overdose 
kills. 

When a man gets into the state of chronic sham 
he's a Pharisee. A great many people are prevented 
from becoming Pharisees by being acquainted with 
their shams. A Pharisee doesn't know the difference 
between sham and fact. He employs sham, not with 
altruistic purposes of social ease, but for personal 
gain and because he loves it. 

It happens this way : We will say that he keeps a 



P II A B I S A I S M 54 

store. He lights on a little form that works with a 
customer. He tries it on another with pleasing 
results. He keeps up his little game until he forgets 
it is a sham. That moment he is a Pharisee. 

Or : He is a deacon. He makes a prayer. Results 
are good, objectively and subjectively. He works 
the same thing over and over. At first he realizes 
that there is a lot of sham about him. When he 
forgets it, he is a gone case. 

The so-called "good" people are really nice. I 
think few people realize how nice most "good " peo- 
ple are. The great misfortune which these good 
people suffer is that they forget that there is a lot 
of sham in them. They take their own "goodness " 
too seriously. They lose the humor of the situation. 
Go far enough in this direction, and you have Phari- 
saism pure and simple. A Pharisee knows no more 
about humor than a mule knows about the proper 
length of horse ears. 

Good people aren't too good. They aren't good 
enough. Everybody knows this. It has given rise to 
the theory that the good die young. All people do 
good things, and all people do bad things, some more 
than others, but there are no "bad" people. The 
Sunday classification of people into good and bad 
doesn't hold good through the week. The good people 
aren't so good that their business associates know 
about it without needing to refer to Sunday's records. 
We should not hold this little sham against them, 
though, until they forget about it. You see, when 
they forget about it. it becomes impossible for them 
to grow. They feel no necessity for new shams, and 
no impulse for new truths. They are satisfied. They 
stop making the effort to realize and live up to the 
ideal reality for which the sham has stood. The 



PHARISAISM 



sham supersedes the ideal of the real, and becomes a 
blind guide. 

To cultivate the appearance of evil is worse than 
Pharisaism. That is, it is the worst kind of Phari- 
saism. 

We need to have more of good appearances. 

And the Real Thing. 

Meanwhile let every Pharisee keep up every form 
and show of good, but make him realize that he is a 
sham if you can. Thank God for his shams and save 
him from being one. 

As soon as the man realizes that he is a sham, he 
ceases to be one, especially if he keeps up his little 
shams. 

He that hath eyes to see. let him see through it. 



LofC. 



Ibtnbsiobt 




HERE is only one work better than setting 

T things right, and that is keeping them 
from getting wrong. It may be necessary 
for us to make mistakes in order that we 
grow, or be good, or be saved, or amount 
to anything. We don't know how neces- 
sary mistakes may be to our welfare— or 
rather, don't know how many of them 
may be necessary to our welfare ; but we 
know of things that aren't necessary. It 
isn't necessary to fall off and break your 
neck in order to climb a ladder. 
It isn't necessary to starve a working-man in order 
to learn that he needs something to eat, and is going 
to have it. 

It should not be necessary to raise children in sur- 
roundings of vice in order to see if some of them 
will become criminals ; but w 7 e do it. 

We have excellent penal institutions. They cost 
large sums of money, and an untold amount is ex- 
pended each year in their maintenance, and in the 
detection and punishment of crime. 
Meanwhile we breed it. 

So long as the rich grow richer and the poor grow 
poorer, there will be a steadily increasing amount of 
crime. The hot-beds of its propagation are in the 
very shadow of the church and the market place, 
and receive scarce a thought from those who prosper 
there. There is a sting in crime not only for the 



57 HIXI) SIGHT 

criminal, but for the innocent (!) and the righteous (!). 

Sometimes wisdom learned by experience comes 
high. 

There isn't any sense in propagating crime in the 
filth and degradation of underpaid and overcharged, 
crushed and careless slumdom. Only, do not for a 
moment think that you can stop this process with 
sugar-coated pills. It will take justice— and justice 
is an immense proposition. 

Did you ever think how important it is that every- 
body preserve his self-respect '? If you think that 
self-respect is contingent on prayer-meeting virtues, 
just cut loose on this cold world once without a dol- 
lar at your command, and you will have a chance to 
see things in another light. 

We religious people need to pay more attention to 
this earth. We can afford to lay less stress on morals, 
and virtues, and the gift of talk, and heaven, and 
theology, and more upon the conditions of human 
life. We cannot afford not to do this. We shall 
suffer woefully some day if we go on sowing the 
whirlwind. Punishing crime is child's play. The 
prevention of crime by the promotion of justice calls 
for statesmanship of a high order. 

It costs more to cure disease than it would to 
prevent it. 

The Chinese are said to pay their physicians reg- 
ular salaries to keep them well. The physician must 
not let his patient get sick ; if he does he is likely 
to be discharged. 

We. put the cart before the horse. 

An ounce of prevention is more sensible than a 
pound of cure. It certainly does more good. It is 
foresight. 

Xinety-five per cent, of the diseases of the body 
can be overcome and relegated to ancient history. 



HINDSIGHT 58 

The Bible says so ! Reason and faith and evolu- 
tion and teleology say so. 

If we invite disease we must entertain it when it 
comes. The time to deal with fever is when your 
temperature is normal. Looking backward is waste- 
ful ; it is better to look ahead more. 

Enough is discovered and known about the causes 
of disease to make it possible at once to reduce the 
amount of it fifty per cent, if that knowledge were 
put into practice by the government. Left to anar- 
chy it will not be done. We don't leave sewerage 
and quarantines to anarchy. 

The whole remedial program is pitiable lameness. 

It started with the "plan of salvation." 

As if God were governed by hindsight ! 

There was no mistake made in creation. 

Mankind did not "fall." 

It did not start at the top, but at the bottom. 

Salvation is not a rectifying of mistakes: it's a 
growth. 

Religion isn't medicine ; it's food. 

Redemption is not hindsight. Creation has not 
been sent to a repair shop. Redemption is a poor 
word, but the truth it stands for is the consistent con- 
tinuation of the orderly processes of creation. For 
the work of the Infinite Intelligence is profoundly 
systematic and sublimely comprehensive, and is not 
the retrieving of its own mistakes, nor a losing 
struggle against its own limitations. 

God is foresight, oversight, order. The "plan of 
salvation " does not fit him. He did not make it. 
He made the world, with all its laws and order. He 
has not "repented " of it, nor turned his back on it, 
nor hated sinners, nor despised the unsuccessful. He 
is not ashamed of it, nor of the irreligious part of it. 



HINDSIGHT 



He sees that it is good. So should we if we would 
but open our eyes to see enough. 

The prophets didn't have foresight, but over- 
sight. 

The time has come when we should no longer see 
by hindsight, but by oversight. 

When there is oversight, problems do not vex, 
wrongs do not irritate, injustice does not beget re- 
taliation, clouds do not obscure the sun — very much. 
All problems and wrongs and injustices and clouds 
are to be seen, faced, understood (hindsight does this 
much) : but there are also to be seen and recognized 
the cosmic forces that make for righteousness, and 
the innate goodness of all things. 

The social problems are being solved. 

The civic malpractices are being superseded by 
better politics. 

The religious stupidity is being supplanted by a 
sublime ideal of life. 

If your eyes were true in what they see, you 
wouldn't worry. 

If you knew enough, you wouldn't fret. 

You are invited to Oversight. 



By the Writer of this Book 



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